Firezide Chat with Lucy James

And so, yeah, the millennial generation has to deal with a lot of shit, but it's not as if Gen Z and Gen Alpha have it any better, really.

Well, my oldest kid is 16 this year. Years ago I sat down with him and was like don't watch Andrew Tate, and explained the whole thing to him. And my partner was like, who the fuck’s Andrew Tate? And then we just watched that manosphere documentary with Theroux. She's like, you've been telling our kids not to look at these guys for so long. Yeah, they're fucking toxic. I don't want my kids growing up thinking that shit is normal because it's like you say, it's easy to get sucked into that stuff. It's almost a cult, isn't it?

They promise the things that you want as a teenager – they promise women, they promise the perfect life. They promise status without really having to earn it. They promise money. They can't back any of that up.

What was your childhood like? Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne. My parents are divorced, so I would spend most of my time with my mum, and then every other weekend my dad and my stepmom. My childhood was, I mean, overall, I can't really complain. I think I was a bit lonely.

My sister is my half sister, so I only ever saw her really on school holidays, and so I didn't really have the, you know, growing up with a sibling sort of thing. But I think that ultimately is a good thing, because even though we are very different in what we like, we are very similar in sensibility and we've never once had an argument or even any whiff of a disagreement with my sister.

I think that's a very special thing, and it means that when I do get to go see her, we cherish that time together and mostly have a bottle of wine and talk about the mad shit our parents are doing.

And then, yeah, my mum is working as a single mother, both my parents are lawyers. Both retired now, and all of my mum's friends were lawyers. My dad branched out a bit in terms of people who are his friends. But like, seriously, like everyone on my mom said, was basically either a lawyer or a teacher. That's actually my whole family, really. It's like there are either in legal or teachers.

Where we lived, the Northeast of England, was small. Everyone knows everyone, and especially where I was growing up. Before we moved to Newcastle. I was in Washington – it's an old mining town. Everyone really does know everyone, and so I miss that a lot, because I would go to my aunt and uncle’s after school.

Then we would go to a different house and everyone was your aunt and uncle as well, regardless of if they were related to you or not. And then you go over here, then you go over there. And then, yeah, I just, I miss how small my world used to be, I think.

Then we moved to Newcastle, I went to a different school, and I loved it, but at the same time, it was a lot of pressure. And I think a lot of my anxiety stems from going to a school that would really push us for grades and such.

Were you being groomed to follow in your parents’ footsteps down the lawyer route? 

No. Well, they didn't really know what they wanted for me. I really didn't know what I wanted to do. There was a time where I was flirting with getting into the medical field, and I respect anyone who does that.

This is how weird the UK is. There were these little overnight ‘try being a medical student for a day’, ‘try being a legal student for a day’ camp things. And I did both of those.

The medical one starts off kind of fun. It's like, here's a proposed timeline of residency, and when you'd be earning this amount of money, and let's suture up an orange. I was like, this is cool. I could do this. And then they had someone come out who was like, okay, realistic. This is what it's like. And I was like, I don't want to do that.

And then the legal one was so boring by comparison. Also, the woman who came out. I remember her, she was just like, I've been learning for this much, and I owe this much in student loans, and I'm not going to earn this, and it's not all about the money, but there was no passion in her work either. She's just like, I get up at 7am and I immediately have to go through my case notes. I want to have a life outside of that.

So my parents were not grooming me by any means to get into legal. They wanted me to find something. They definitely wanted me to pursue higher education.

So when I went to university, I studied psychology, because I was like, that's broad enough. That's a broad degree that I can put in other places. But unfortunately, that's also where I discovered video game media existed and that I could potentially do it as a job. So…

Were you playing lots of video games around that time?

Yeah, always.

What was your favorite stuff growing up?

Gaming was like a thing that my dad and I did. I had a Game Boy Color at my mum's, but the PC was at my dad's. So I had a Game Boy Color at my mum's, and I played the Alone in the Dark port on that, I had Pokemon on that, I had a Mummy Returns game on there. Nothing really great on the old Game Boy Color.

Perhaps this is why I didn't really become a Nintendo person, because I didn't play Nintendo games on it. And then my dad had the PC, and then my sister had a PS1, and then I got the PS2 at my mum's when it first came out.

So around then, you're talking late ‘90s. It was excellent. It was Quake, it was Doom, it was Tomb Raider, Worms, tie-in movie games I had. I remember I had the Toy Story one. My dad's really big on Myst, so that was a really nice thing. I had no idea, but we would sit and play together. 

It's hard even now I have a fully developed brain, Myst. 

Yeah, it's hard.

When I moved, my dad turned my bedroom basically into the second office, which has all of his Myst stuff. He has all these notebooks, so he's written down notes. Very sweet.

And then I had all my sister's PlayStation games, like the classic platformers: Croc, Spyro and Crash Bandicoot.

And then when I got my PlayStation 2, that's when the Kingdom Hearts of it all came in, the Tony Hawk.

Are you a Final Fantasy head as well?

I wasn't really. 12 was the first one that I played. 12 to this day is still my favourite. 

It's always the first one you play.

Exactly. It's like, who was James Bond when you were growing up? And that's why I'm team Pierce Brosnan.

So 12 was the first one that I played, and I really enjoyed. But I think at that time I was still learning the language of gaming. And Final Fantasy 12, I don't even know how I managed to kind of basically go in cold on that. That would have been my first JRPG, really, I think. 

I think the first game that was truly special to me would be Okami, because I used to read the teletext Game Central. So teletext, which I miss, would be the thing that I checked every single day. I remember that I used to know the time that it would update, all that kind of stuff. I loved teletext. I would always do the Sudoku there, too.

But I would love Game Central, and I would always love how people would write in. I remember for a while, in 2006, all anyone was messaging about was Okami. So I bought it immediately, and I just absolutely fell in love with it, and it is still one of my favourite games of all time. Turning 20 this year. I don't love thinking about that.

So how did you go from there to being in the industry then?

So when I went to university, that's when I got an Xbox 360 and that's when I really, you know, spun out. That was your Batman Arkham, that was your BioShock, that was your Red Dead, Mass Effect, all that kind of stuff. Rock Band and Guitar Hero in particular, we played a lot.

And that's even when I had a full introduction to Nintendo through the week. So a friend of mine, Joe, had all the consoles, and we'd all play them all together.

I was doing a module about language, and at this point, I'd also found games media because I was so obsessed with any coverage on Red Dead. I will never forget the 101 trailer, in Red Dead Redemption, you play John Marston. 

So I was eating up everything, and I found a YouTube channel called Game On with Johnny Chiodini.

So I was at university having my language module, and then they showed a blooper from Game On. It was either Nathaniel or Johnny who couldn't say something, they just kept fluffing their line.

I messaged them, and I was like, Oh, isn't this funny? And I immediately just sort of thought, well, what if I worked there? This is the old dream of, like, if you want a job, just ask for it.

And so I asked Johnny, and they were like, oh, so I'm actually leaving, this place doesn't do internships, but the next place I'm going to does, so pass on your CV.

And it turned out the next place that Johnny went to was obviously GameSpot. And so from there, I can't remember if they messaged me about it or if something came up, but either way, they passed on my CV and I had an interview, and I was an intern there in January of 2012 and all the while I was writing for a couple of blogs. And then I was also writing for my university paper.

Then I was an intern in January 2012 and then from there, I maintained my connection with folks at GameSpot. I freelanced for them a couple of times.

And then I took myself to E3 which I think helped. I met a lot of people, and I got a badge through GameSpot. And then I took myself to Gamescom too, and that is where I met Adam Mason from Ginx TV, where I got a job the next month because they needed a host. 

So you put yourself in a position where you could jump into the opportunity. 

The position being, I lived in London, I was working as a cleaner and other odd jobs, and freelancing, and just hoping something would come up. And luckily, it did very quickly. Was very, very lucky.

What's the worst job you've had?

Worst job? The thing is, I've always liked all my jobs. Even when I was a cleaner. So I used to clean and be a receptionist at the Lawn and Tennis Association.

So even though it took me an hour each way to get there, even though I was clearing up… okay, teenage boys are disgusting. Imagine a bunch of 15 to 16 year olds all living in one room because they would go to this place to train, and they would all leave their wet towels on the bed, and I would be the person to go in. The things I've seen in some of these bathrooms… I would go in and clean all that.

But even that I didn't mind. I love cleaning. I think I find it very meditative. I can't work or even really relax if my house is a mess, and I travel a lot, and so I have to really push myself to put stuff away as soon as I get in – do my laundry, put stuff away.

And so that job I actually really loved, because it was a huge empty place. No one was in there. Yeah, funnily enough, building a big tennis place, you know, too far outside of London, means that no one's gonna come there.

I was also really into tennis. When I was growing up, I played a lot of tennis. So I got to meet Greg Rusedski, which is really cool. And I met Andy Murray's mum. It was fun because I would walk around, and that is when I discovered I was just laughing to myself because I was listening to Regular Features. Back then, that's when I first started listening to podcasts.

I was being paid shite wage. But it's very funny, because the person who got me that job was my housemate at the time, who is now the best selling author, Caroline O'Donoghue.

She's working on a TV show based on her book at the moment. And so every now and then, we'll message each other like, congratulations on this next big thing you're doing. And I'm just like, remember when you got me that terrible job cleaning? And I looked back at the old email where she forwarded me the job, and she just said, Hey, Lucy, you like tennis.

It's so strange, but yeah, I feel like all roads were supposed to come together in that way.

When did you feel like you'd made it in this career that you're in now? I know it's a loaded question, because you've got ambitions beyond where you've got to, right?

You have to. I think I genuinely didn't feel that I'd made it until I moved over to America and I would get recognition from people. In the UK, everyone knows everyone. It's so small, everyone knows everyone, and everyone came up at the same time.

So me, Joe Skrebels, who's now EIC of Xbox Wire, we've got Luke Karmali, who is now head of PR over at Larian, and that kind of group of us. There's this real thing of people who all came up together, and so in that way, it's like, well, these are also my friends. There was no making it, because it was just all you and your mates going to things like E3.

Being in the office and managing to get opportunities that we couldn't have had in the UK just because we were in the UK, that's where I feel that I made it. And also, I think when we started Friends Per Second, people were nice about it. I think that was the real big thing for me, where I was like, oh, and now I'm in a place where developers will come to us, or publishers will come to us and be like, we listen to the show, that's cool.

With Gamespot, I'm an employee from GameSpot. GameSpot is the brand, and we all have opinions, and we are all part of it, don't get me wrong, but it's a nebulous thing, whereas Friends Per Second is just me, Ralph and Jake – an opinion on the show is more keenly attributed to the individual who made it, rather than GameSpot says.

You got the Ken Levine scoop as well, right? 

Yeah, that was an insane DM to receive, which was from Ken himself, because I interviewed him a lot back when Infinite was coming out. 

Yeah, I think relationship building is one of the key things to this job as well, right? Like, I've got devs who I’d class as good friends. I don't think you need to do the whole networking thing. You just be nice to people and don’t be weird. 

I was talking about this yesterday. I have a lot of friends because I – and I don't mean that in a braggy way – fundamentally don't understand treating friendship as a transactional thing. I have been in situations where people will be talking to you, but they're looking around to see if anyone more interesting or more famous is there, and then they'll immediately drop you.

I remember that stuff, because I'm like, why would you? I don't understand that. I fundamentally don't understand the climbing part of it. I'm very open with people. I think people always say to me that I'm very easy to talk to, and I'm very easy to open up to. And I find that a compliment, for sure, but I think it is just a genuine interest in people. 

I do a lot more of what you would call traditional networking, but it's just to build a foundation to be like, hey, what are you working on?I'm genuinely interested in, and if we become friends after this, that'd be great as well.

You know, dropping people if they're not important enough… 

You don't know who's important anyway, because people change jobs so fucking much in this industry, it's crazy.

Exactly, but it's also like, your job isn't everything. I'm so lucky. Loads of my best friends are in a 10 minute radius of me. Two of them are in a 10 second radius of me, literally next door, and I can't overstate the feeling of how important community has been.

So that sounds like I've really sipped the American Kool Aid. I know it does, but like, yeah, just being surrounded by people is nice, and that's coming from an introvert. I get wiped by, like, dealing with, you know, stresses. There's a reason I have two cats, man.

Would you say that's the best thing about your job? Then the people around you? 

Oh, absolutely.

I adore video games. I live and breathe video games. I consider it an immense privilege that I get to speak to people who make them and I have a natural curiosity around what decisions went into making this thing. How did this turn into that? I absolutely love that, but I have met so many incredible people. I've met my absolute best friends. I've got to meet heroes. I've been I've had the opportunity to do some amazing things and but yeah, it is the people, every single person I know basically works in games, the people who don't, the people who I'm really close to, who I went to school with, obviously, like they know little bits and it's but even so, like the main people that I talk to every day are all hashtag gamers.

It makes dating exceedingly difficult, though. 

Why’s that? 

Because being in your 30s, I'm gonna be picky. And there has to be some kind of baseline of, like, common interests for me. And unfortunately, in San Francisco, the pool is already… Kirk, it’s bad. I'm not interested in, you know, AI Bitcoin gym bros, and finding a good nerd is difficult.

What's the worst thing about your job?

The worst thing about my job is that there is no end to the job. Can't play a game without thinking about what I'm going to say about it. I don't review things really, you know, pen to paper, score at the end. I don't really do that. I did it. I did Persona 5. I'll go out on a high. That was, that was… God… almost 10 years ago.

But the act of reviewing, it's just not one that I particularly enjoy. Maybe this is the social creature in me, but I just like the act of talking about a game with other people. And so, you know, that's why I love doing Friends Per Second so much.

Ralph, Jake and I, we have a pool of games that I know we'll all like, but I know games that Ralph will like, and vice versa, nd I know what Jake will like, and vice versa.

And so if I want to know about Marathon, I'm 100% going to Ralph, because he's the Destiny guy. Jake and I will play a bit, but really it's Ralph's take. And so then for my stuff, it's like, the indie games, the more experimental stuff, they'll come to me to be like, should I play this? I'm like, yep, this is a Jake game, this is a Ralph game.

Being able to ask questions and have questions asked of you about stuff forces you to think more than if you are in your own head being like, I have this blank Google Doc and a word count to hit. I think people can tease other things out of you.

Yeah, absolutely. Who do you admire the most in the industry? You don't have to say me, just because I'm here. 

Oh, it’s Kirk McKeand. I mean, I admire a lot of people in a lot of different ways. I admire the folks who have gone out on their own and really made it so, you know – your Kinda Funnys, your MinMaxes. Sydnee Goodman is killing it, she's doing all of her gaming content again, it's doing really well.

So, people who just take a bet on themselves. Chris Plante’s stuff is amazing. Totillo, Schreier are breaking the traditional mold. And, you know, George Osborne  (the good one, not that one), everyone who writes and has gone out on their own and done something interesting. I don't go to a website destination anymore. I am a newsletter person. I'm actually an RSS feed person. Reader, sponsor me. I love you. 

I really admire that. And then I admire Geoff, obviously, the stuff that he's built over the years and the shows and the work that he does for developers I admire. In terms of developers, anyone who ships a game is a hero. Actors like Jen English, who is on an absolute tear at the moment, as is Ben Starr. They're incredibly talented actors, and like they are just connecting with gaming in all the right ways. Because, yeah, they love it.

It's harder to find someone I don't admire because everything is so shit and everyone doing their thing is incredible. 

I find Ben Starr annoying. 

Ah, I'll tell him. 

I'll tell him myself. He's just, he's so handsome, and he's funny as well. Can't you be stupid or like, can you not have something wrong with you?

You know who doesn't like Ben Starr? My cat.

I see him a lot more than I used to. He's great, and he's annoyingly talented.

I respect the way he just took that Final Fantasy role and ran with it and used that to build his audience.

I’m sorry, but he did fucking better marketing for that game than Square Enix. 

What's the best bit of life advice you've heard? 

A few things, honestly. One of them from Chris Dring, another person who I really admire. Chris said, if you're not learning anything new, it's maybe time to think about something else. I think that's good in like, all factors of life – if you're not learning any more than you know, you're just kind of stagnating.

It's why I try to do a lot of different things, and dip my toe into a lot of different productions and stuff, and trying to push myself with writing, writing more features, instead of just relying on, like conversational video.

The other bit is coined by Tam (Tamoor Hussain), which would be: see, the drama, don't be the drama. That always sticks to me as well. If you read So You've Been Publicly Shamed, and then take that, you know, adage with you, that's, that's kind of it, because life's too short for clout chasing.

Do you have any bad habits? 

Um, yeah. I need to be very militant with myself about, like, I'm going to bed rot for this amount of time, or I will just stay. I'm a person who can and will push things.

And so I have to be very, very militant. I don't let myself work on the couch anymore. I never let myself work in bed. Ever. If I want to get some serious work done, I am in this room at this $50 Facebook Marketplace desk, and I have to lock in, because if I am left to my own devices, I will sleep. I have chronic fatigue syndrome. I can sleep whenever. I will doom scroll. And that's not good for anyone, is it?

I could be doing something not productive. That's the thing. I think we're in a society where everything has to be productive and there are influencers who've made their entire thing on, like, productivity tools and everything – no, you just have to get your stuff done. You don't have to do it in the most efficient way. I think that's my bad habit. I try to maximise my efficiency on everything, when really I could just do it.

Would you say that's what you dislike most about yourself? Or is there something else?

Ooh, what do I dislike most about myself? Yeah, probably. I think part of it is growing up at a school where perfection was demanded – people were asked to leave my school if they didn't get good grades. 

I use a Pomodoro – there is this innate and external push to be perfect, and I think sometimes I definitely fall into that trap.

And then I realised that you know, to err is to be human, and I think it's fine to go easy on yourself every once in a while, especially when everything is shit. 

I think the worst thing about myself is that I forget that I have a chronic illness. So I have chronic fatigue syndrome. I don't have it severely. It can be, you know, absolutely debilitating, like you can't even look at light. You're in constant pain. I don't have it that bad.

I'm supposed to be pacing, and sometimes I forget to do that. So I recently went to Chicago for a long weekend with my friends. Then I did GDC. So GDC by itself would be enough. I decided to do them both, back to back. And then on Friday night, I was supposed to go out for a meal with my friends. I had a nap in the afternoon, and I woke up and I was like, ooh, I don't feel right. Took my temperature. I had a temperature of 101 because that is a side effect. Like, when you push yourself too hard, your body basically goes: no. It's like the sick reaction of trying to fight something that you don't have.

I went to sleep, took a covid test, completely negative, slept for 12 hours, woke up.

And then that Saturday, I went to a birthday party for one of my friend's kids, and I lasted an hour, and then I went back and I went back to sleep. I basically just slept most of Saturday into late Sunday, and then went to see Nine Inch Nails. 

Randomly, I will get little heart palpitations so I have a thing on my phone to track if my heart rate goes up, so I can pull it back a little bit. But that's the thing – rest doesn't feel necessarily like rest. I never feel rested.

Did you grow up with that then?

So I got formally diagnosed a couple of years ago. I've always been very sleepy, but I don't think I ever had it to the point where I'd have the crashes. So the worrying thing was the crashing. There was one time a couple years ago, it was Fourth of July weekend and I had a really severe crash that I just slept most of a long weekend – it was very, very severe, and I was quite worried.

Luckily, this is where being neurotic can come in handy. I was tracking all of this because I was like, something is not right. I need to advocate for myself. So I kept track. The thing about America, you email your doctor, you leave a paper trail.

So I was emailing my doctor for a year, basically being like, I don't think this is right. And then I basically requested, can I have my thyroid tested? I want the full works. They couldn't find anything. So they sent me to a sleep clinic, and I got to do the overnight Professor X stuff, and I slept ten to six, eight hours.

And then they were like, okay, we're going to keep you in during the day. We're going to put you down for a nap. You're going to lie there for half an hour. If you fall asleep, we'll let you sleep for 15 minutes, then we'll wake you up. If you don't sleep, you just lie there for half an hour, and then we'll come get you. They did that every two hours from 8:30 through to 4:30. I slept every single time. 

Christ!

Critics agree that the girl sure can sleep.

And then from there it was like, you don't have apnea. You don't seem to have any other kind of sleep disorder. This is probably ME. So got that on the old medical record. And as I get older, as a woman, your hormones start changing. And so for me, it's a big old balance of figuring out what my limits are, and it sucks.

There's no meds or anything, not for chronic fatigue. 

Just get on the meth. That's all the rage over there. 

Oh God, it might get my heart rate up, mate,

What's the best thing you've read recently?

The best thing I read recently is The Devils by Joe Abercrombie. I got really into reading at the start of the year. I read six books in January, but the best was easily The Devils.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen meets the Expendables by way of a corrupt church and werewolves and all manner of hell creatures. And it is so well written, I think about those characters all the time, and I don't say that about books a lot. Right now I'm reading Babel, and I started off really enjoying it, but I am kind of struggling with it. The middle of it is not really doing it for me, so I might have to DNF it.

The last few months, I've tried to read, I've dropped them all halfway through. I don't know what's wrong with me. I think it's because the last book I finished reading was Blood Meridian, and it's so, so depressing.

The Devils is a good time.

What's the best game you've played recently?

Best game I played recently? Hang on. Ah, got a spreadsheet. I'm very militant about my use of my Steam. I can't actually tell you what the best game I played recently is, because it is embargoed, depending on when this goes out.

Honestly, the best thing I played recently is a huge surprise, because it's Pokopia. I don't like Pokemon. I don't give a toss about Pokemon. I like Animal Crossing, though I didn't love it as much as other people.

Looking at my library. Oh, played the Runt demo. Oh, my God. Runt was awesome.

I've never even heard of that.

It’s a visual novel where you play the youngest brother who helped protect a town after a weird post apocalyptic event, and there are awful, awful creatures roaming around outside and by pure strength, your brothers have positioned themselves into positions of power. You are the runt and your dad was a cult leader, and one day you go to pay respects to your dad and someone has desecrated his church. And so your eldest brother, the real fucked up one, the one that everyone is scared of, tasks you with finding out who did it.

So it's like an investigation game. You have to spend time doing your chores and quizzing people. But it is so well written. I played the demo. I played for an hour or so, phenomenal. It's published by the Dread XP folks who really specialise in that fucked up kind of horror. I will tell anyone to play that demo.

I'll wait until it's out. I'm not a demo guy. I feel like sometimes I play the demos and then I just, I don't want to play the game when it's out. It's bad enough when you do a preview and then you do another preview and then you’ve got to play the intro again. 

The third Resident Evil was kind of like that, because it was like, here's three hours of the game. It was like, three hours. I want to play all of it now, but especially because it's like at the very beginning of the game. And, for me, it's like the strongest part of Resident Evil.

If you could travel back to an important part in history, where would you go?

I would love to see the fall of Rome. I would just love to go to Ancient Rome in general. I had a reaction. Would love to see the pyramids. I really loved history when I was a kid. I still love history now, I listen to a lot of history podcasts. Listen to podcasts to go to sleep, and I love The Fall of Civilizations. 

I would love to see what just like life would be like the Middle Ages. Just what life used to be like – the double sleep thing, I'd love to see how that worked.

The what?

So humans sleeping eight hours at night is, like, a relatively recent thing. What we used to do is we used to go to bed after sundown, sleep for like four hours, wake up, do chores, cook, do whatever, and then go back to sleep again until dawn.

That sounds alright.

Two big sleeps.

I love that you gave me, like, five different answers.

Um, yeah, I would just like to see from afar. Feudal Japan would be sick. 

What about if you could go back and say something to your younger self, like, what age would you go back and what would you say?

I would go back to when I was very depressed at uni. Second year at University, I almost dropped out, and I was super, super depressed. I think I just need to go and tell that version of me it's gonna be fine. Don't be so hard on yourself. Things work out. Because I definitely needed to hear that at the time,

When was the last time you cried?

When was the last time I cried chemically? I used to cry all the time. Oh, I know, I can tell you exactly the last time I cried. It was Christmas day and I had just got off FaceTime with my nieces and my elder niece was just really sad that I wasn't there. And she's nine, almost 10, and she was really, really sad, and that's very difficult. The little one is like, obviously sad too. But you know, she understands more.

How often do you get to come back?

I'm in the middle of filing my green card, and there's going to be a period of time that I'm not allowed to travel. And I'm honestly very stressed about it, because my parents are getting older, my family are getting older –  if something happens and I can't be there… I'm in the middle of working with my lawyer, to be like, when should we do this? You're better off not worried about things that could happen, don't worry about things that aren't within your control. 

How do you want to be remembered when you die? 

Well, it's not in your control, but if I could get everyone to remember me a certain way. I don't know. Someone that tried to do their best, you know, was a good hang

What would you have on your headstone?

Oh, I'd have, some some shit joke, 100% some shit joke. I don't know what it would be? Critics agree. She sure can sleep.